Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch painter whose formal distortions and humanistic concerns made him a principal forerunner of 20th-century expressionism.

Born on March 30, 1853, at Groot-Zundert in the province of Brabant, Vincent Van Gogh was the son of a Protestant minister. His uncle was a partner in Goupil and Company, art dealers, and Vincent entered the firm at the age of 16 and remained with it for 6 years. He served the firm first in The Hague and then in London, where he fell in love with his landlady's daughter, who rejected him; then he worked for Goupil's branch in Paris.

Because of Van Gogh's irritability, Goupil dismissed him in 1876, and that year he returned to England, worked at a small school at Ramsgate, and did some preaching. In early 1877 he clerked in a bookshop in Dordrecht; then, convinced that the ministry ought to be his vocation, he entered a religious seminary in Brussels. He left 3 months later to become an evangelist in a poor mining section of Belgium, the Borinage. Van Gogh exhibited the zeal and devotion of a martyr, even giving away his clothes, but his eccentricities alienated the miners, and he was dismissed in
July 1879. This period was a dark one for Van Gogh. He wished to give himself to others but was constantly being rejected.

After much introspection, Van Gogh decided in 1880 to devote his life to art, a profession he accepted as a spiritual calling. When in London, he had visited museums, and he had done some drawing while in the Borinage. In October 1880 he attended an art school in Brussels, where he studied the rudiments of perspective and anatomy. From April to December 1881 he stayed with his parents, who were then in Etten, and continued to work at his art. At this time his cousin from Amsterdam, a widow with a 4-year-old son, rejected him, and he subsequently formed a close relationship with a pregnant prostitute, a move that precipitated a break with his family. At this time, too, he studied at the academic art school at The Hague, where his cousin Anton Mauve, who worked in the sentimentalized fashion of the Barbizon painters, taught.

Dutch Period

During his Dutch period (1880-1886) Van Gogh executed works in which his overriding humanitarian concerns were overtly manifest. His subjects were poor people, miners, peasants, and inhabitants of almshouses. Among his favorite painters at this time were Jean François Millet, Rembrandt, Honoré Daumier; among his favorite authors, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—all of them interested in the poor and dispossessed. Complementing Van Gogh's dismal subject matter of this time were his colors, dark brownish and greenish tones. The
masterpiece of the Dutch period is the Potato Eaters (1885), a night scene in which peasants sit at their meal around a table. The coarseness of the peasants is emphasized; in rendering them Van Gogh approached caricature. Yet he caught, too, a warm communality, a remarkable sense of love and fellowship which his painted peasants seem to share.

Years in Paris

Van Gogh decided to go to Paris in early 1886, partially because he was drawn to the bohemian life and artistic activity of the French city. His brother, Theo, was then living in Paris, where he directed a small gallery maintained by Goupil's. Theo supported Vincent financially and emotionally from the time he decided to become a painter. The letters between the brothers are among the most moving documents in all the history of Western art. Vincent shared Theo's apartment and studied at an art school run by the conventional painter Fernand Cormon, where he met Émile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who became his friends. In part through the contacts provided by Theo, Vincent met the leaders of impressionism—Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Gauguin—and the neo-impressionist Georges Seurat.

Largely under the influence of the impressionists, especially Pissarro, Van Gogh was persuaded to give up the gloomy tones of his Dutch period for bright, high-keyed colors. Also, his subject matter changed from the world of peasants to a typically impressionist subject matter, such as cafés and cityscapes about Montmartre, and he copied Japanese prints. But while subjects and handling were obviously derived from impressionism, there could frequently be detected a certain forlorn quality, as in a scene of Montmartre (1886), where pedestrians are pushed poignantly to the periphery of an open square.

Van Gogh remained in Paris for 20 months and profited from his stay. Under the influence of impressionism his palette was liberated. But the frenetic life was too much for him; he wanted a place of light and warmth, and he did not want to be entirely financially dependent on Theo, so in February 1888 he left for Arles in southern France.

Stay at Arles

The pleasant country about Arles and the warmth of the place restored Van Gogh to health. He worked feverishly: in his 15 months there he painted over 200 pictures. At this time he applied color in simplified, highly saturated masses, his drawing became more virile and incisive than ever before, and objects seemed to radiate a light of their own without giving off shadows. During this period he also turned to portraiture and executed several self-portraits. Among the masterpieces of his Arles period are the Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries (June 1888); the Night Café (September); and the Artist's Bedroom at Arles (October), where the chairs about the bed seem to be acting out a spectacle and almost appear to be living beings conversing.

At Arles, Van Gogh suffered fainting spells and seizures. The local population began to object to him. Gauguin, responding to his invitation, visited him in October
1888, but the two men quarreled violently; Gauguin left for Paris, and Van Gogh in a fit of remorse and anger cut off his ear. On May 9, 1889, he asked to be interned in the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de Provence.

Production at Saint-Rémy

In the year he spent at the asylum Van Gogh worked as feverishly as at Arles and produced 150 paintings and hundreds of drawings. He copied engravings after Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, and Millet. Van Gogh suffered several attacks but was completely lucid in between. At this time he received his first critical acclaim, an article by the writer Albert Aurier.

During Van Gogh's stay at Saint-Rémy his art changed markedly. His colors lost the intensity of the Arles period: yellows became coppered, vermilions verged toward brownish tones. His lines became writhing and restless. He applied the paint more violently with thicker impasto. Van Gogh was drawn to objects in nature under stress: whirling suns, twisted cypresses, and surging mountains. In Starry Night (1889) the whole world seems engulfed by a paroxysm of circular movements. Some critics have attempted to link the linear movements of his Saint-Rémy period with the vogue of Art Nouveau, but Van Gogh's paintings at this time reveal an intensity and convulsive force found in none of the Art Nouveau painters.

Van Gogh went to Paris on May 17, 1890, to visit his brother. On the advice of Pissarro, Theo had Vincent go to Auvers, just outside Paris, to submit to the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, himself an amateur painter and a friend of Pissarro and Paul Cézanne.

Last Year at Auvers

Van Gogh arrived at Auvers on May 21. He painted a portrait of Dr. Gachet and portraits of his daughters, as well as the Church of Auvers, agitated by a baroque rhythm with the church silhouetted against a cobalt sky. The blue of the Auvers period was not the fully saturated blue of Arles but a more mysterious, flickering blue. In his last painting, the Cornfield with Crows, Van Gogh showed a topsy-turvy world: the spectator himself becomes the object of perspective, and it is toward him that the crows appear to be flying.

At first Van Gogh felt relieved at Auvers, but toward the end of June he experienced fits of temper. He quarreled with Gachet. On July 27, 1890, he shot himself in a lonely field and died the morning of the 29th. Theo died insane 6 months later in the Netherlands, and his body was taken to France to be buried next to that of his brother.

Further Reading

The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (3 vols., 1958) is more engrossing than most novels. The catalogue raisonné is by J. Bernard de la Faille, ed., L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh (4 vols., 1928). A good introduction to Van Gogh's life and works is Abraham M. Hammacher, Genius and Disaster: The Ten Creative Years of Vincent van Gogh (1968). An excellent study of the artist is Marc Edo Tralbaut, Vincent Van Gogh (1969). Other useful studies are H. R. Graetz, The Symbolic Language of Vincent van Gogh (1963), and Frank Elgar, Van Gogh: A Study of His Life and Work trans. 1966). Brilliant analyses of a selected number of paintings are in Meyer Schapiro, Vincent van Gogh (1950). See also John Rewald, Post-impressionism (vol. 1 1956; 2d ed. 1962). □

Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

van Gogh, Vincent

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch painter whose formal distortions and humanistic concerns made him a major pioneer of twentieth-century expressionism, an artistic movement that emphasized expression of the artist's experience.

Childhood

Born on March 30, 1853, at Groot-Zundert in the province of Brabant, Holland, Vincent Willem Van Gogh was the son of a Protestant minister, Theodorus Van Gogh. Exactly a year before his birth, his mother, Cornelia, gave birth to an infant, also named Vincent, who was stillborn, or dead upon birth. His grieving parents buried the child and set up a tombstone to mark the grave. As a result, Vincent Van Gogh grew up near the haunting sight of a grave with his own name upon it. His mother later gave birth to Theo, his younger brother, and three younger sisters. Not much is known about Van Gogh's earlier education, but he did receive some encouragement from his mother to draw and
paint. As a teenager he drew and painted regularly.

Van Gogh's uncle was a partner in Goupil and Company, art dealers. Vincent entered the firm at the age of sixteen and remained there for six years. He served the firm first in The Hague, the political seat of the Netherlands, and then in London, England, where he fell in love with his landlady's daughter, who rejected him. Later he worked for Goupil's branch in Paris, France.

Because of Van Gogh's unpleasant attitude, Goupil dismissed him in 1876. That year he returned to England, worked at a small school at Ramsgate, and did some preaching. In early 1877 he clerked in a bookshop in Dordrecht. Then, convinced that the ministry ought to be his calling, he joined a religious seminary in Brussels, Belgium. He left three months later to become an evangelist (a preacher) in a poor mining section of Belgium, the Borinage. Van Gogh exhibited the necessary dedication, even giving away his clothes, but his odd behavior kept the miners at a distance. Once again, in July 1879, he found himself dismissed from a job. This period was a dark one for Van Gogh. He wished to give himself to others but was constantly being rejected.

In 1880, after much soul searching, Van Gogh decided to devote his life to art, a profession he accepted as a spiritual calling. When in London he had visited museums, and he had drawn a little while in the Borinage. In October 1880 he attended an art school in Brussels, where he studied the basics of perspective (representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface) and anatomy (the human body). From April to December 1881 he stayed with his parents, who were then in Etten, and continued to work on his art. At this time, too, he studied at the academic art school at The Hague, where his cousin Anton Mauve taught.

Dutch period

During Van Gogh's Dutch period (1880–1886) he created works in which his overriding concerns for his fellow man were growing. His subjects were poor people, miners, peasants, and inhabitants of almshouses, or houses for the poor. Among his favorite painters at this time were Jean François Millet (1814–1875), Rembrandt (1606–1669), and Honoré Daumier (1808–1879). Complementing Van Gogh's dreary subject matter of this time were his colors, dark brownish and greenish shades. The masterpiece of Van Gogh's Dutch period is the Potato Eaters (1885), a night scene in which peasants sit at their meal around a table.

Van Gogh decided to go to Paris in early 1886, partially because he was drawn to the simple and artistic life of the French city. His younger brother, Theo, was living in Paris, where he directed a small gallery maintained by Goupil and Company. Theo had supported Vincent financially and emotionally from the time he decided to become a painter, and would continue to do so throughout his life. The letters between the brothers are among the most moving documents in all the history of Western art. Vincent shared Theo's apartment and studied at an art school run by the traditional painter Fernand Cormon, where he met Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), who became his friends.

By now Van Gogh was largely under the influence of the impressionists, a style of painting where the artist concentrates on the immediate impression of a scene by the use of light and color. Especially influenced by Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), Van Gogh was persuaded to give up the gloomy tones of his Dutch period for bright, high-keyed colors. Also, his subject matter changed from the world of peasants to a typically impressionistic subject matter, such as cafés and cityscapes around Montmartre, an area of northern Paris. He also copied Japanese prints. While subjects and handling were obviously taken from impressionism, there frequently could be detected a certain sad quality, as in a scene of Montmartre (1886), where pedestrians are pushed to the outer sides of an open square.

Stay at Arles

Longing for a place of light and warmth, and tired of being entirely financially dependent on Theo, Van Gogh left for Arles in southern France in February 1888. The pleasant country about Arles and the warmth of the place restored Van Gogh to health. In his fifteen months there he painted over two hundred pictures. At this time he applied color in simplified, highly dense masses, his drawing became more energetic and confused than ever before, and objects seemed to radiate a light of their own without giving off shadows. During this period he also turned to painting portraits and executed several self-portraits. Among the masterpieces of his Arles period are the Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries (June 1888); the Night Café (September); and the Artist's Bedroom at Arles (October).

At Arles Van Gogh suffered fainting spells and seizures (involuntary muscle
spasms). The local population began to turn against him as well. Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), responding to his invitation, visited him in October 1888, but the two men quarreled violently. Gauguin left for Paris. Van Gogh, in a fit of remorse and anger, cut off his ear. On May 9, 1889, he asked to be admitted to the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de Provence, a hospital for the mentally ill.

Production at Saint-Rémy

In the year Van Gogh spent at the asylum he worked as much as he had at Arles, producing 150 paintings and hundreds of drawings. Van Gogh suffered several attacks but
was completely peaceful in between. At this time he received his first critical praise (a good review), an article by the writer Albert Aurier.

During Van Gogh's stay at Saint-Rémy, his art changed markedly. His colors lost the intensity of the Arles period: yellows became coppers; reds verged toward brownish tones. His lines became restless. He applied the paint more violently with thicker impasto, the application of thick layers. Van Gogh was drawn to objects in nature under stress: whirling suns, twisted cypress trees, and surging mountains. In Starry Night (1889) the whole world seems engulfed by circular movements.

Van Gogh went to Paris on May 17, 1890, to visit his brother. On the advice of Pissarro, Theo had Vincent go to Auvers, just outside Paris, to submit to the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, an amateur painter and a friend of Pissarro and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).

Last year at Auvers

Van Gogh arrived at Auvers on May 21, 1890. He painted a portrait of Dr. Gachet and portraits of his daughters, as well as the Church of Auvers. The blue of the Auvers period was not the full blue of Arles but a more mysterious, flickering blue. In his last painting, the Cornfield with Crows, Van Gogh showed a topsy-turvy world. The spectator himself becomes the object of perspective, and it is toward him that the crows appear to be flying.

At first Van Gogh felt relieved at Auvers, but toward the end of June he experienced fits of temper and often quarreled with Gachet. On July 27, 1890, he shot himself in a lonely field and died the morning of July 29, 1890.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

Van Gogh, Vincent

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

Vincent Van Gogh (văn gō, Dutch vĬnsĕnt´ vän khôkh), 1853–90, postimpressionist painter, b. the Netherlands. Van Gogh's works are perhaps better known generally than those of any other painter. His brief, turbulent, and tragic life is thought to epitomize the mad genius legend.

During his lifetime, Van Gogh's work was represented in two very small exhibitions and two larger ones. Only one of Van Gogh's paintings was sold while he lived. The great majority of the works by which he is remembered were produced in 29 months of frenzied activity and intermittent bouts with epileptoid seizures and profound despair that finally ended in suicide. In his grim struggle Vincent had one constant ally and support, his younger brother Théo, to whom he wrote revealing and extraordinarily beautiful letters detailing his conflicts and aspirations. As a youth Van Gogh worked for a picture dealer, antagonizing customers until he was dismissed. Compulsively humanitarian, he tried to preach to oppressed mining families and was jeered at. His difficult, contradictory personality was rejected by the women he fell in love with, and his few friendships usually ended in bitter arguments.

Ten years before his death Van Gogh decided to be a painter, fully conscious of the sacrifices this decision would require of him. His early work, the Dutch period of 1880–85, consists of dark greenish-brown, heavily painted studies of peasants and miners, e.g., The Potato Eaters (1885; Van Gogh Mus., Amsterdam). He copied the work of Millet, whose idealization of the rural poor he admired. In 1886 he joined Théo in Paris, where he met the foremost French painters of the postimpressionist period. The kindly Pissarro convinced him to adopt a colorful palette and thereby made a tremendously significant contribution to Van Gogh's art. His painting Père Tanguy (1887; Niarchos Coll., Paris) was the first complete and successful work in his new colors. Impressed by the theories of Seurat and Signac, Van Gogh briefly adopted a pointillist style.

In 1888, in ill health and longing for release from Paris and what he felt was his imposition upon Théo's life, he took a house at Arles. At Arles he was joined by Gauguin for a brief period fraught with tension, during which he mutilated his left ear in the course of his first attack of dementia. His paintings from this period include the incomparable series of sunflowers (1888; one version: National Gall., London); The Night Café (Yale Univ.); and The Public Gardens in Arles (Phillips Coll., Washington, D.C.). During his illness he was confined first to the Arles Hospital, then to the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where, in 1889, he painted the swirling, climactic Starry Night (Mus. of Modern Art, New York City).

Van Gogh's last three months were spent in Auvers near Pissarro, painting the postman Roulin and the sympathetic, eccentric Dr. Gachet, a physician and collector who watched over him. Vincent's consciousness of his burden upon Théo, by then married and a father, increased. His work tempo was pushed to the limit; one of his last paintings, Wheat Field With Crows (Van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam), projected ominous overtones of distress. He despaired and shot himself, dying two days later in the arms of his brother. Théo died shortly thereafter.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

Van Gogh, Vincent

Van Gogh, Vincent (1853–90) Dutch painter, a leading exponent of expressionism. He was a lay preacher to Belgian coal miners before suffering a psychological crisis. Virtually self-taught, Van Gogh's early works, such as The Potato Eaters (1885), are Millet-influenced studies of working-class life. In 1886, he left Holland for Paris, where his palette was transformed by post-impressionism, experimenting briefly with pointillism. In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles, Provence, where he was joined by Gauguin. Suffering from mental illness and depression, he cut off part of his left ear after a quarrel with Gauguin. Van Gogh's paintings from this period include the Sunflower series (1888), and the Night Café (1888). He entered an asylum at Saint Rémy, where he painted a series of intense landscapes, such as Starry Night (1889). These paintings are executed with heavy brushwork in heightened, flame-like colour, with passionate expression of light and emotion. Van Gogh committed suicide in Auvers. In a brief and turbulent life, he sold only one painting and was supported by his younger brother Théo.

http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl; http://org; http://www.nga.gov

Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.